American History 11R

Which event in the 1920’s had the

longest lasting impact on

American society and why? • End of WWI

• Scopes Trial

• Sacco & Vanzetti

• Prohibition

• Economic Boom

• Communism

• Arms Control

• Klu Klux Klan

• Morals and Manners

Postwar American Attitudes • Disillusionment following World War I,

particularly among veterans, artists, and

intellectuals (the Lost Generation)

• Society was lacking in idealism and vision

• Sense of personal alienation

• Americans were obsessed with

materialism and outmoded moral values

• Desire for Isolationism – pulling away from

world affairs.

Fear of Bolshevism

• Success of Russian

Revolution combined with

epidemic of strikes frightened

Americans into "Red Scare"

mentality of 1919-1920

• Attorney General A. Mitchell

Palmer arrested 6000

suspected radicals and

deported many following

several bombings

Fear of Foreigners • Over 800,000 immigrants came to America in

1920-21, with 2/3 coming from southern and eastern Europe

• To preserve the northern European racial composition of America, quotas were set up to restrict new immigration in a series of acts, including the National Origins Act of 1924 which cut immigration to 2% of each nationality from the 1890 census.

Sacco and Vanzetti

• Italian anarchists,

accused of murder during

a bank robbery.

• Anti-immigrant attitudes

prejudiced their trial.

Protests from within and

outside the U.S.

• Found guilty, but most

likely didn’t do it

• Executed in 1927

Rise of the Nativist Ku Klux Klan

• Reconstituted partly after the success of the movie

Birth of a Nation, the new KKK was more anti-

foreign than anti-black. Its strength was in the

Midwest and South.

– Targets: foreigners, Jews, Catholics, pacifists,

communists, and evolutionists

– By 1925, 5 million members had joined to march in

parades, burn crosses, and hold secret meetings

Movement lost strength,

particularly after it was

exposed as a money-

making scheme by

organizers

Arms Control following WWI

• Washington Naval Conference (1921) set

a ratio of naval tonnage among the five

leading naval nations in an attempt to limit

naval armaments. Participants also agreed

not to build new bases in the Pacific.

• Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) signers--62

nations--agreed to renounce war as a

solution for international disputes.

Labor Movement Falters

• Work force of

immigrants willing to

work for low wages

and in poor conditions.

• Difficulty organizing

different ethnic groups.

• Unions excluded

African Americans.

Prohibition During 1920’s

• Against the sale of alcohol

• Doomed to failure due to lack of government

enforcement.

– Bootleggers and Organized Crime

– Speakeasies

Fundamentalism vs. Modernism

• Fundamentalist Christians, stressing literal

biblical interpretation, opposed any

scientific teaching that cast doubt on

veracity of scripture, particularly Genesis

• Modernist Christians, mainly urban and

better educated, attempted to adapt

religion to the teachings of modern science

and a changing world

Scopes “Monkey” Trial

• Dayton, Tennessee, 1925 – John Scopes purposely violated Butler Act forbidding

the teaching of evolution

– William Jennings Bryan assisted prosecution while Clarence Darrow defended Scopes

– Scopes found guilty (conviction later overturned), but Darrow's cross-examination of Bryan exposed narrowness of fundamentalist position as anti-science and anti-progress

– Movie Speech

Prosperity and Consumerism

Roaring 1920’s

• Tremendous performance of American

economy in early 1920s. From 1920-1929:

– Manufacturing output rose more than 60%

– Gross national product (total of goods and

services) rose 5% a year

– Industrial output per worker grew 33%

– Per capita income grew 30% with virtually no

inflation

Mass Consumption

• Consumerism fostered growth of

advertising which benefited from

expansion of national mass-circulation

magazines, such as Time, Reader's

Digest, and The Saturday Evening Post.

• Installment Purchasing Plan – Enables

people to buy goods over an extended

period of time.

Causes of Economic Boom • Destruction of European economies during World

War I left the U.S. as the only major industrial nation

– Technology allowed for expansion, particularly in the auto

industry

• 1.5 million cars sold in 1920, 5 million cars sold in 1929

• Assembly line methods used by Ford and others made cars

affordable to many American families

– Radio and motion picture industry grew as a result of

technological innovations

– Cheap, readily available energy sources (coal, oil) made

expansion affordable

– Scientific management techniques promoted by Frederick

Taylor were adopted widely in an attempt to improve

efficiency

Flapper • New Attitude for New Age

• Emancipated young women

– New fashions

– Urban attitudes – smoking, drinking,

dancing

• New Work Opportunities

• Changing role in household

• New Literature captured era

– F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

• Double Standard

African American Great Migration

• In 1910, 89 % of all blacks remained in southern states, and nearly 80 % of those lived in rural areas.

• During the early 1900’s, over 1 million African Americans moved from the South to the North.

• Problems

– Faced same prejudice in Northern cities

– Competed with whites for unskilled jobs. • Often used as strikebreakers

Black American Goals of 1920’s

• W.E.B. Du Bois

– Writer and Teacher

– Professor of History and

Economics at University of

Atlanta

• Helped found National

Association for the

Advancement of Colored

People (NAACP)

– Protest racial violence

– Editor of The Crisis, official

magazine

Black American Goals of 1920’s • Marcus Garvey

– Universal Negro

Improvement Association

(UNIA)

• African Americans should

build a separate society.

• “Black is Beautiful”

– Arrested for mail fraud and

sentenced to five years in

prison 1923, Deported in

1927

The Harlem Renaissance

• Literary and artistic

movement celebrating

African American culture.

• Writers

– Langston Hughes – poet

– Claude McKay – novelist

• Actors

– Paul Robeson

Jazz Age • Created in New Orleans

in the early 1900’s

• Blend of instrumental

ragtime and blues

creates new uniquely

American sound.

• Performers

– Cab Calloway, Bessie

Smith

– Louis Armstrong in

Chicago and Duke

Ellington in New York

begin their careers in

1927.

Other Significant African

American Issues of 1920’s

• First Anti-Lynching legislation approved by

House of Representatives in 1922.

• Harlem Globetrotters established 1927.

• Mass defection of blacks from the

Republican party began in 1932.

American History 11R

Election of 1920

• 1920 presidential election

• Republican Senator from Ohio

Warren G. Harding

– Slogan “Return to Normalcy”

• Democratic Governor from Ohio

James M. Cox

– Running mate FDR

• Harding won

• Beginning of 12 years of

Republican control.

Largest percentage popular vote victory

since Monroe (60%)

Warren G. Harding

• Budget Act – 1921

– President more control over national budget

– President has to submit national budget

• Washington Naval Conference - 1921

• Corrupt Administration

– Teapot Dome scandal

• Naval oil leases on federal land

• Biggest presidential scandal up to Watergate

(1972)

– Died in 1923 of stroke

Coolidge Prosperity – 1920’s • 1923 – VP Calvin Coolidge becomes

president due to death of Warren G.

Harding.

• “The chief business of America is business”

• Kept taxes down, high tariffs, reduced

income taxes

• Easy credit for businesses to grow.

• Election of 1924

– Split in Democratic party

• Conservative – John W. Davis, Congressmen (WV)

• Liberals – Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette

– Progressive Party Candidate

Election of 1924

Election of 1928

• Republican – Herbert Hoover –

– Highly respected politician

– Food Administrator during WWI

– Secretary of Commerce – Harding, Coolidge

• Democrat – Alfred E. Smith –

– Progressive Governor of New York

• Hoover wins big

– Belief that prosperity will continue forever

Good Times Forever